Peter Diamandis has been named one of the world’s 50 greatest leaders by Fortune Magazine. In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Today, the X PRIZE leads the world in designing and operating large-scale global competitions to solve market failures.

Joshua Waitzkin – Considered a chess prodigy and the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, Josh has perfected learning strategies that can be applied to anything, including chess, Brazilian jiu-jutsu (he is a black belt under phenom Marcelo Garcia), business, and Tai Chi Push Hands (he is a world champion).

Ramit Sethi is an American personal finance advisor and entrepreneur. Sethi is the author of the 2009 book on personal finance, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a New York Times Bestseller, and a co-founder of PBworks, a commercial wiki website.

Did you find this post valuable? If so, please let me know in the comments. If you dig it, I’d compile more posts that spot patterns across top performers.

Related and Recommended

The Tim Ferriss Showis one of the most popular podcasts in the world with over 500 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.

Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That’s how we’re gonna
be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you’re rude, we’ll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)

What an awesome compilation Tim! I am a huge lover of audiobooks – I consume them all of the time while working, so you have definitely added quite a few to my reading list. I am always on the lookout for motivational or personal development books to take my business to that next level! “The Four-Hour Workweek” however, is most definitely one of my all-time favorites. 🙂

Tim, this is a great collection of suggestions! As I go into the Christmas holidays, this will give me some great ideas on what to read. I’ve enjoyed Holiday’s suggestions in the past (read “Meditations” and the Benjamin Franklin biography – plan to finish “Titan” by Chernow this weekend).

This article also reminds me to pick up some of the books I already have and get down to reading them (e.g. “Man’s Search for Meaning”).

Some of these books are life-changing; The War of Art by Pressfield is a personal favorite. Glad you had James Altucher on the show. Great guy and even though he’s a bit eccentric, he’s got amazing things to say.

I just discovered the Tim Ferriss podcast and have listened to 24 or so in rapid succession! I’m trying to find a book mentioned in one of them– I can’t remember by whom, though, and it’s not listed here (though I think it’s Kevin Kelly)– it’s a graphic novel for teens on how to be indispensable. I think it starts with the letter K. Ring a bell, anyone?

Thank you so much for this great abundance of knowledge! I have many of these books on Kindle, audible or Librivox and others will be pick up from the library! I love how the universe conspires with us!

Amazing that Atlas Shrugged is mentioned more than once. Several other non-billionaire guests have mentioned it too — my guess is that it’s the most recommended book on the show! I know Tim is aware of Ayn Rand and I think he mentioned he was reading her non-fiction writing course but I’ve never heard him talk about Atlas Shrugged. Curious if he’s a fan too??

There was a book mentioned on the podcast that I remember the person saying it was pretty hard to find because it is out of print but you could get it on Ebay sometimes and then joking about the price of it going up after people hearing it on the podcast. I think they also mentioned a book by the same author that half way through reading the book, you then flip the book upside down to read the second half. Does anyone remember which book / author / podcast this was on?

Yes, Yes, thank you! I went hunting for something like this a while back after realizing I hadn’t written down everything from the podcasts I’d listened to! I’m building a list of 1001 books to read before I die (or in the next 10 years or less, ideally) that’s based on what the people I actually care about the experiences and opinions of actually reccomend, and this contributed a beatiful chunk. Thank you Tim!

I don’t know if you’re still checking these replies, but this post is super helpful. As a matter of fact if your team made a more current edition that would be even better. You’ve done so many amazing interviews and there is so much great content it is difficult to go through it all. Thanks for making all this great stuff and giving us access to such an amazing group of individuals!

Louise Hay, you can heal your life. So many people struggle with low self esteem and have health issues. Louise shines light on how you can change it. Her book help me tramensly that in my own personal development it lead me to write a book which is being launched this week. Thursday, 9/22. Titled ,Harness your Purpose, Power, and Peace. Discover the Leader within You”. You see at one point in my life a doctor opened my heart because of health issues but the greatest story is how the horse heals my mind.

Are these really unusual books though? They seem to me to be fairly standard self-improvement books. There’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact it’s a very good endorsement of mainstream self-improvement tomes that so many successful people read and implement them. If we all had to read unusual books, or rare books, or esoteric books to get ahead, we’d be screwed. Overall, becoming successful is easier than people make it out to be, and the books Tim has compiled here proves that. I, for one, am glad there is no secret knowledge required for success, but just the requirement of using easy to implement knowledge.

Thanks for sharing this list. I put some of them on my reading list. With so many articles and books to read nowadays, one needs to be picky. Fall and winter, perfect time to curl up on the couch with hot tea and read some good novels with the sound of rain outside.

i am looking for a book mentioned in one of the podcasts but can’t remember title 🙁 It is a first person perspective book and author I think had an unusual surname (like if that helps..). Moreover it was I think his first book and Tim also recommended it strongly after reading. The strong clue is that narration is first person and someone in the podcast described it as ”You wake up in a hotel room, your eyes are hurting and red” or something like that..

Sorry if this doesn’t make much sense but its been while since that podcast.

I don’t know if you planned to put this list in front of me as I need more books to read and with Christmas right around the corner. Or if it was just the right time for me to see it.

You taking the raw data that gets teased out of your show and turning it into condensed and categorized information makes it much more useful to me. Especially because I never remember which show contains what when i think back on things.